The Eastern women’s volleyball team is no stranger to adversity. Head coach Miles Kydd abruptly resigned in late August, citing personal reasons, leaving then assistant coach Lisa Westlake to serve as interim head coach. Senior setter Laney Brown suffered a toe injury that required surgery two weeks before the season began. Junior setter Lindsay Niemeier was ready to take her place, but went down with a torn ACL in the season-opener.
Westlake was forced to make a decision. She chose to insert junior outside hitter Ashley Wright into the vacant slot. When Brown was lost, Wright began taking practice reps as setter, a position she had no familiarity with, just in case Niemeier went down.
“They had me training very very briefly just so I could fill in if Lindsay went down,” Wright said. “Of course it happened in the first match of the season.”
So far, Wright said, the transition has not been just challenging for her. The entire team is affected by the change.
“I was basically just thrown into that and we’ve just kind of had to do the best we could with it,” she said. “The hitters had to play awesome and the passers had to do really really well too. I think everyone definitely stepped up to the challenge and played really well so I could set the most basic thing I could.”
Westlake has approved of the job Wright has been doing. She commended the junior for her work ethic and spirit.
“She’s learning to set and she’s coming along fine. She’s a big, six-foot outside hitter,” Westlake said. “She has great hands and she’s a hard worker. We knew she’d do whatever it takes for the team.”
Westlake acknowledges that her volleyball team has been through a lot this year. That does not, however, mean the Eagles are letting that get in the way of progress.
“My job is to try to get them to realize that if they work hard and things keep coming together, it’s not impossible for us to win Thursday anymore than it is Friday,” Westlake said.
Westlake admitted that the team has had to overcome adversity early in the year. She believes there is more to sports than simple competition.
“There have been quite a few things that just keep hitting the team,” Westlake said. “I think they’re learning life lessons. They’re learning to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
Still looking for their first win, Wright said that the team is working towards being more consistent. According to Wright, momentum is important to being successful. She said the team is moving towards being able to maintain their competitiveness for longer periods of time.
“We’ll get on a run and do really well for a long period of time and then we’ll kind of falter if we get tired or if our consistency starts to go down,” Wright said. “We’ll lose momentum quickly. … You want to keep the momentum on your side.”
According to middle blocker Talia Fermantez, the team has been executing drills that forces them to think faster. Moving on from mistakes is also key in being successful.
“We’ve been running a lot of drills where it kind of forces us to try to side out fast,” Fermantez said. “[We] just try to bounce back as fast as possible.”
Wright agreed and said that getting first-ball kills is important. According to Wright, a first ball kill is when the opposing team serves the ball and the receiving team gets an immediate kill. Siding out is what happens when a team gets a first-ball kill. When a team sides out, they get the serving possession.This has been a main focus of the team.
“Our coach has been putting emphasis on getting more points doing that or getting out of the drill quicker if you get first ball kills, which is what you want to do in a game,” Wright said.
Wright and Fermantz are confident in their teammates and believe there is a lot of talent surrounding them. Although they have yet to register a win, the Eagles have gotten closer to emerging from games victorious. They are using close losses as motivation to turn their season around.
“We can’t use the excuse ‘We don’t know how to win’ because we know how to win,” Wright said. “We’ve shown that we can fight and in each game we kind of prove something new to ourselves and our team and there are positive things that we can do. We just need to learn to do them longer.”
Fermantez reminisced on the game against Northern Arizona University where the Eagles lost three sets to one. She said that even though they lost, everyone on the team believed they could win. According to Fermantez, there is strong belief and faith within the team.
“Having that faith in each other and believing [in] each other [is] what keeps motivating us that we will get that win,” Fermantez said. “It’s coming. Our day is coming soon.”